Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
‘Station Strangler’ going nowhere soon Norman Simons fails to obtain parole for his life sentence for murdering 10-year-old boy
NORMAN Afzal Simons, the man dubbed the “Station Strangler”, has been considered for parole and will not be released from prison any time soon.
He will have to wait until next year for the matter to be considered afresh, according to a well-placed source who said the Correctional Services minister decided last year that Simons, who is serving a life sentence in jail, should not be released on parole.
And even if the matter is reconsidered next year, there is no guarantee of his release, because authorities would require new information to persuade them that he could be reintegrated into society.
Judge Siraj Desai, who chairs the National Council of Correctional Services (NCCS), which recommends whether offenders should be released, would not confirm or deny that a decision was made in Simons’s case, saying that he was not at liberty to comment on recommendations on individual offenders.
“That matter hasn’t come before the NCCS in recent months. Any lifer sentenced after 1994 has to have his case decided by the NCCS, which makes a recommendation to the minister.”
Judge Desai has been on the council for the past 16 years.
He said that if it was considered that a lifer should not be released, the offender had to wait a further two years before a fresh consideration could be made.
Since Weekend Argus has been informed that Simons’s matter was decided in the latter half of last year, it means he can only be considered for release again next year.
The Western Cape commissioner for Correctional Services, Delekile Klaas, said Simons would appear before the parole board in June next year. The parole board would make a recommendation to the Correctional Services council, which would then advise the minister.
The notorious Station Strangler terrorised the Cape Flats from 1986 to 1994, during which time 22 boys between the ages of nine and 13 were killed.
The boys were all found face-down in shallow graves, their hands bound behind their backs and their shoes removed. All showed signs of having been sodomised and each had been strangled with his own clothing.
Simons, a former Mitchells Plain schoolteacher, was convicted in 1995, charged with killing and kidnapping only 10year-old Elroy van Rooyen, and later jailed for life.
He was not prosecuted for any of the other 21 child murders he was suspected of perpetrating.
Meanwhile, a second prosecutor in the State’s case against Simons, Annette de Lange, said this week the State had had a “strong case” against Simons, and that she had “no doubt” he murdered Elroy.
Her statements contradict those made by her co-prosecutor in the case, Mike Stowe, who called a local radio station on Monday to say the State’s case against Simons was “thin”, and that there had been only “one eyewitness”.
De Lange told Weekend Argus this week that the circumstantial evidence against Simons was “overwhelming”.
“We had proper and sufficient evidence. Our case was strong enough. I am convinced Simons is the right person and that he’s guilty. There’s nothing to the contrary that has convinced me otherwise. There’s nothing that excludes him.”
She also said two courts had found the witness, Fouzhia Hercules, “credible and reliable” when she positively identified Simons as the person who had been walking towards the Strand train station with Elroy.
Simons was convicted and sentenced in the Western Cape High Court to an effective 25 years in jail for Elroy’s murder. He appealed against his conviction and sentence, but the Appeal Court increased his sentence to life imprisonment.
De Lange said this week that the fact that the Appeal Court increased Simons’s sentence “gives us food for thought”.
She said the Appeal Court would have granted Simons’s appeal if it had “even the slightest doubt” about his guilt.
Stowe also told the radio station an identikit drawn up showed the Station Strangler with a large wig or Afro, and that the picture the prosecution had of Simons did not match the identikit. However, De Lange said the identikit showed a “stark resemblance” to Simons’s picture, with both showing a “prominent scar at the same place” on his face.
The Afro was “a slight Afro, not big, and he could have teased his hair to make it look like that”.
On Stowe’s comment that if Simons had testified in his own defence, the result of the case might have been different, De Lange said: “No one can say how Simons would have performed under cross-examination.”
Although Stowe said Simons was at a library in Claremont at 2.30pm on the day in question, and it was improbable he could have reached the Strand railway station by 4pm, De Lange said: “I remember nothing about a library.” She added that Simons was in the Cape Town city centre earlier that afternoon to apply to become a police reservist.
She and other state officials had checked all the possible routes Simons could have followed, and had established he could have travelled from Cape Town to the Strand in time to kill Elroy near Kleinvlei.
“I personally drove the routes and measured them to make sure he could have got there,” De Lange said.
Asked to comment, forensic scientist Dr David Klatzow said confession- based investigations, such as the case fought against Simons, were unreliable. “I have no confidence in confession- based investigations. It’s never a good way to do an investigation.”